openSkies: Integration of Aviation Data into the R Ecosystem

Rafael Ayala, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
Daniel Ayala, University of Seville
Lara Sellés Vidal, Imperial College London
David Ruiz, University of Seville

Copyright 2021, The R Foundation. Open access material. License: CC BY 4.0 International

Abstract

Aviation data has become increasingly more accessible to the public thanks to the adoption of technologies such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and Mode S, which provide aircraft information over publicly accessible radio channels. Furthermore, the OpenSky Network provides multiple public resources to access such air traffic data from a large network of ADS-B receivers. Here, we present openSkies, the first R package for processing public air traffic data. The package provides an interface to the OpenSky Network resources, standardized data structures to represent the different entities involved in air traffic data, and functionalities to analyze and visualize such data. Furthermore, the portability of the implemented data structures makes openSkies easily reusable by other packages, therefore laying the foundation of aviation data engineering in R.